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by Jean Calder

Twenty two people died in Manchester and 120 were injured when suicide bomber Salman Abedi blew himself up at an Arianna Grande concert packed with children and young people. Given that the former teenage actor is an idol of young teenage girls, it is likely that the bomber understood very well that most of the victims would be very young and female.

It may be that, as some commentators have said, that the bomber simply didn’t care that the victims were children, but went for soft targets at an event with little security. Or that he deliberately aimed to attack children, knowing the distress and terror this would create. Few have acknowledged the probability that this was a deliberate attack on girls.

Journalists and politicians who had no difficulty describing the 2016 Orlando attack as an assault on LGBT people, struggle to identify the Manchester bombing as a targeted hate crime, aimed not at ‘children’ but at girls. Yet this attack is entirely consistent with previous evidence of targeted attack against females. In 2004, young islamists were recorded by British police while discussing a possible attack on a London nightclub. The men commented that no one could “turn round and say ‘Oh, they were innocent’, those slags dancing around”. The journalist James Harkin has pointed out that In 2007, a car bomb outside Tiger Tiger nightclub in London’s Piccadilly “seems to have been designed to coincide with a ‘ladies’ night’ at the venue, in which the perpetrators might have hoped to kill and maim scantily clad young women drinking alcohol.”

ISIS, the extremist Islamist organisation that has claimed responsibility for the Manchester attack, has many similarities to other Jihadi groups such as the Taliban, Al Qaeda, Jabhat al-Nusra (now Jabhat Fateh al-Sham) and Boko Haram. Their adherents are islamist Sunni Muslims, influenced by Salafism, a sectarian system of thought rooted in Saudi Wahhabism. Funded by the Saudi government this ideology is now deeply embedded in British mosques and has taken root in universities, museums, libraries and schools. At its heart is the forced subordination of women and girls.

The Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan, like Boko Haram in Nigeria, regularly attack girls, often in their schools, subjecting them to fire bombs, rape, kidnap and murder. The most famous victim of this sort of attack was Malala Yousafzai, who was shot on a school bus in Pakistan because she campaigned for girls’ education.

Malala rejected the highly confined role conservative sharia law permits to women and in so doing asserted her right to freedom and self-determination. She was supported in her free choice by her loving parents – as were the teenage girls attending the Arianna Grande concert – but to Salafist jihadis this would make no difference.

While young men like Abedi treat the women of their own Muslim communities with contempt, they reserve their deepest loathing for rebellious women and those in particular who are ‘apostate’ or non-muslim. They view them, as the journalist Sarah Vine puts it, as “barely human, the lowest of the low, for whom no punishment or suffering can ever be enough.” She says “We see this in the treatment of young Nigerian schoolgirls captured by Boko Haram and sold into sexual slavery; we see this in the mass rape of Yazidi women by Islamic State guerrillas; we’ve even seen it in our own country, in the systematic sexual abuse of young girls in Rochdale by so-called ‘moderate’ Muslim men who wrap their own daughters in the hijab, while simultaneously defiling other parents’ children”.

Politicians have for decades sacrificed young Muslim girls on the altar of multiculturalism, allowing powerful community leaders and domestic tyrants to deny girls equal rights to inheritance, freedom and even control of their own fertility. They have allowed generations of boys to grow up believing that they have a right to control female lives and domestic labour – whether this takes the form of untrammelled sexual access to obedient wives and control of their children or the sexual abuse of White girls from Rochdale, Christian schoolgirls from Nigeria or Yazidis from Sinjar.

A young unveiled Muslim woman on Question Time (25th May 2017) spoke out against Wahhabism in British mosques, calling for Saudi funding to be stopped. This brave young woman was supported by panelist Nazir Afzal, the former Crown Prosecutor of the North East of England who had a key role in ensuring that the organised abuse of white working class girls by groups of Pakistani-origin men, was eventually prosecuted.

These brave Muslims, like the Amadiyha Muslim women who stood on Westminster Bridge in protest against the murderous violence of Khalid Masood, deserve our respect, support and gratitude.

There has been an increase in sexual offences against women.

The Crown Prosecution Service’s Violence Against Women and Girls report, published in September 2016, has shown that convictions for rape, domestic abuse, sexual offences and child abuse have reached record levels.

The conviction rate for rape cases rose to 57.9 per cent of the 4,653 cases.

In total 11,995 defendants were prosecuted in 2015-16 for sexual offences other than rape, up from 9,789 the year before. The figure has steadily increased since 2012, but this is the steepest increase yet. Sexual offences range from non-consensual sexual touching to serious sexual assault.

The vast majority of defendants were men, with women accounting for just 2.7 per cent, and of those prosecuted 78 per cent were convicted.

There were 206 prosecutions for revenge pornography, after new laws to tackle the crime were introduced in April 2015. Disclosing private sexual images without consent carries a maximum sentence of two years in prison.

Alison Saunders, Director of Public Prosecutions said the internet had contributed to the overall rise and had enabled other offences, with defendants relying on “tactics such as GPS tracking and monitoring phone or email messages” to control or coerce victims. She said “The use of the internet, social media and other forms of technology to humiliate, control and threaten individuals is rising”.

Note: This report was drawn from a report in the Daily Telegraph.

FOD Comment: FOD notes that despite improved conviction levels for rape and sexual offences, the CPS receives little credit, but instead is repeatedly attacked by politicians and the media when cases fail. Sometimes it is alleged that cases have been badly investigated or prosecuted, but more usually the implication is that police and CPS lawyers have accepted the word of a woman making a ‘false allegation’. FOD notes that when figures are published which suggest high levels of sexual violence against women and horrifying levels of male violence, politicians and media pundits are almost always silent. It troubles us that those that do comment, so readily focus on on-line abuse, as if the problem is technology rather than sexism and male violence. The debate we should be having is about how to keep girls and women safe while challenging and changing male behaviour.

From Jean Calder at For Our Daughters

FOD wrote to David Cameron on 18th August 2014 asking him, in the months before the 2015 general election, to declare the fight against homicide and life threatening violence towards women and girls a national political priority. Similar letters have gone to all other party leaders.

Violent Death of Women and Girls: National Priority for Action or Unfortunate Fact of Life?

I write on behalf of For Our Daughters, a charity which works to end homicide and other violence against women and girls – and to commemorate those who have died.

We are conscious of the work your own and previous governments have done to counter violence against women and girls. We are grateful for the commitment of the present Home Secretary to this issue – along with that of the Shadow Home Secretary and other individual politicians at Westminster and in the devolved governments.

We are also grateful for your personal commitment to support strong families – though we suspect you do not yet realise the full extent to which contempt for and violence against women and girls undermines those families and our communities.

We are confident that your own and other political parties share a desire to end violence against girls and women. Our doubt, however, is whether you and your fellow party leaders are prepared to make this the national priority it needs to be.

Most politicians are aware of the familiar statistic that in England and Wales two women die each week at the hands of partners and ex-partners. However, across the UK, at least 3 to 4 women and girls die each week as a result of all forms of male violence. This is higher than the total annual death rate during the Northern Ireland conflict and exceeds annual troop losses in Iraq and Afghanistan – and certainly terrorist-related deaths in the UK – yet is barely publicised or debated. In the first 7 months of this year alone at least 87 adult women died.

The way in which government statistics are collated and presented – usually gender-neutral and compartmentalising different forms of violent assault – seriously obscures the extent to which females are victimised. Notwithstanding this, it is clear that the rate of life-threatening assaults, torture, mutilation and rape experienced by female victims in the UK exceeds that suffered by civilians in many theatres of war – and is increasing.

Official government reports of the annual homicide statistics regularly highlight the fact that the majority of homicide victims are male and a minority female. Every violent death is tragic and it is true that more males than females die violently (around two thirds to a third). However, male homicide victims are rarely if ever targeted because of their male gender and overwhelmingly die at the hands of other men.

The majority of female victims are killed by men, usually in their own homes and workplaces by partners or ex-partners – or die during sexual or physical assault by male family members, acquaintances or strangers. Girls and women are the only social group regularly targeted by serial killers – almost certainly due to their relative powerlessness and subordinate status – and form the
majority of victims of so-called ‘honour’ killing.

Although women are at greatest risk of domestic homicide, it’s important to avoid too exclusive a focus on violence by partners and ex-partners. There is little difference between the brutal ‘domestic’ murders of women like Cherylee Shennon, Holly Gazzard or Ahdieh Khayatzadeh – all of whom were killed by abusive ex-partners – and the sexual homicides of small girls such as April Jones and Sarah Payne; the murder of teenager Georgia Williams, who rejected her killer’s advances; multiple homicides of females by serial killers; and the rape and murder of frail pensioners such as Rosina Sutherland or Margery Gilbey. Whatever their age and circumstances, all these women and girls died because men whom they encountered held them in contempt, believing they had the right to control and injure their bodies – and ultimately take their lives.

We believe that if any other physically identifiable social group was so consistently targeted for murder, rape, torture and other human rights violations – in effect if a small war were being waged by a significant part of one section of society upon another – it would be an acknowledged national scandal at the top of any government’s agenda. There would be national strategies led by the prime minister of the day, cross party agreements, inter-departmental co-operation at the highest level of government, security service involvement and generous budgets. Every organ of the state would be expected to co-operate to end the killing and atrocities and achieve a lasting peace.

However, the victims in this case are female and women have born this burden for centuries. There remains an assumption, these days rarely openly asserted, but still widely held, that male violence towards women and the social attitudes which underpin it are a fact of nature or an aspect of entrenched culture – and therefore incapable of political change. This is a betrayal of women, deeply insulting to men and something our organisation absolutely refutes.

We do not understand why, when most political parties accept that the family is the bedrock of our society, greater attention is not paid to ending life-threatening violence within it – not least because this lies at the root of so much child abuse (of girls and boys) and other violence and social damage. Homicide is its most extreme form and yet – unlike say racist, youth, knife, gun or gang killing – is rarely discussed as a social problem demanding and capable of political solution.

In our view, there is no greater threat to the nation than this violence at its heart. Certainly, there can be no true peace, justice or freedom within it until it is addressed. As we approach the forthcoming general election, we call on your party and others to make this issue central to both your manifesto and your planning for future government and promise to:

develop a UK-wide strategy to end violence against women and girls and challenge the sexism and attitudes of contempt which foster it

set up cross-party and inter-departmental structures to progress this work requiring the Prime Minister and Home Secretary to report regularly to Parliament

set clear time-limited targets to reduce and then end domestic and sexual homicides

require all police, health and social services to record, monitor and publish gender-specific data about violent crime, in particular homicide and assaults in which there is potential threat to life.

designate domestic and sexual violence as a sixth National Policing Priority

We know this is an intractable problem, but so too was sectarian violence in Northern Ireland. A time came when politicians called time on that conflict. We ask you to do the same in respect of homicide and life-threatening violence against women and girls.

Died 8th August 2013

Caroline Parry (46) was shot dead in Seabreeze Avenue in Newport on 8th August 2013. She was found dead in the street next to her car. After her death neighbours reported hearing three gunshots.

In June 2014 her husband Christopher Parry (49) from Cwmbran, from whom she was separated, went on trial for her murder at Newport Crown court. He denies murder but has admitted manslaughter.

Ms Parry was the mother of two children, a19-year-old daughter and a16-year-old son.

Ms Parry lived in Cwmbran for a number of years, but had recently moved to Newport.

Parry was described as a “controlling and dominant” individual. It is alleged he shot Ms Parry dead because he could not accept she had left him. Ms Parry was shot in the back at close range near her home.

Prosecutor Michael Mather-Lees QC said Parry waited for his wife to leave her new lover’s home on the morning of the shooting, before removing a semi-automatic shotgun from the boot of his car.

Mr Mather-Lees said that after shooting her he then turned the gun on himself, which left him with “substantial head injuries”.

Newport Crown Court heard Parry had been “controlling” during the 27-year marriage.

Mr Mather-Lees said: “Such was the state of the marriage she left and went to live with her mother, telling her husband she would never go back to him. But he could not accept the fact that his wife had left him after years of unhappiness. She later went to live with a man called Gary Bidmead who she had met before she left the marital home.”

In the months before the shooting Parry, who had a shotgun licence and kept three firearms at his Cwmbran home, kept his wife “under surveillance” and phoned her persistently, the jury was told. Mr Mather-Lees claimed the shooting was a “carefully planned scheme” by a man “not prepared to let go”. He said “Parry later claimed it was his intention to kill himself in front of his wife – not shoot her. If that was the case why did he have a semi-automatic with three cartridges? The answer is he was planning to kill her and kill her he did.”

After he shot himself Parry was taken to the city’s Royal Gwent Hospital with serious head injuries and was treated under police guard. It was more than a month before Gwent Police officers could interview him.

The trial continues.

The case was referred to the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) because of prior police contact before the incident.

After the shooting Chief Inspector Huw Nicholas confirmed police were not looking to speak to anyone else about the incident, adding: “This is a tragic incident and our priority and focus is to give the appropriate and specialist support to the families of those involved and to investigate and establish what happened here this morning. While I am limited as to what I can say about the people involved, what I can say is it is known that they had previously been in a relationship which had come to the attention of police. For this reason we have referred the matter to the IPCC.”

After the deaths, Lliswerry ward councillor Allan Morris has told residents not to panic.
He told Wales Online: “People shouldn’t be alarmed. This appears to be a tragic but isolated incident. It is no reflection on the general demeanour of the area. The police response appears to have been magnificent.”

Note: This report was drawn from reports in the BBC and Wales On-line.

FOD Comment: As is usual in cases such as this, we have been unable to find out much about the victim in this case. The media have reported far more about her killer. We do not know the result of the IPCC report, but would be interested to know what protections were put in place for this woman and why this man was allowed a gun licence. We note Cllr Alan Morris’ reference to this as a “tragic but isolated incident”. In fact, such ‘incidents’ are all too common. One of the reasons they are so common is because domestic violence and harassment are not taken seriously enough and domestic homicide is still viewed as family ‘tragedy’ rather than the terrible crime it is.

Found dead 5th June 2014

Margaret Evans (69), known as Margo, was found dead at her home in Knockancor Drive, Portstewart in Northern Ireland on Wednesday 5th June 2014. She had been beaten.

In October 2014 Alun Kinny Evans (32), her son, appeared in court charged with her murder. He was also charged with possession of cannabis with intent to supply.

Margaret Evans was was a well-known businesswoman and had run a hair salon. She continued to work on a part-time basis following retirement in January. She was married to John Evans.

The alleged killer was released on bail provided he lives at a secure mental health facility and abides by a mental health order.

Detective Sergeant McLaughlin told the court he believed he could connect Evans to the murder and drug offences. He said Evans was arrested after the murder, but that he was deemed unfit for interview. Evans, who lived at home with his mother, was transferred to Holywell Hospital and then to the secure Shannon Clinic of Knockbracken Health Care Park in South Belfast. DS McLaughlin confirmed that a mental health order would remain in place until 5th December.

Detective Chief Inspector Una Jennings said, after Ms Evans’ death “A post mortem is due to take place to determine the cause of death. Mrs Evans’ husband has suffered a terrible loss, but is being supported by his family circle as well as a PSNI family liaison officer. I would like to appeal to anyone in the community who saw, spoke to or met with any member of the Evans family in recent days, or anyone with any information, to contact Coleraine police station or the major inquiry team at Maydown on the non-emergency number 101.”

Local assembly member Claire Sugden said: “It’s a very sad day for Portstewart. Madame Margo, as she was known in the town, was an institution here – until her retirement she ran a very successful business, which indeed still bears her name. Through that, she made many friends and became very popular”

Alliance Party councillor Barney Fitzpatrick said it was “a tragic set of circumstances” adding “They are a much-respected family in the Portstewart area, and obviously the community are completely shocked in relation to this death”.

Note: This report was drawn from reports in the Belfast Newsletter, the Irish Independent and BBC.

from Jean Calder

My daughter was three when Kelly Anne Bates died and five when her killer came to trial. Kelly Anne’s death was the first I had ever written about, certainly the first account of a homicide that I ever had published. I have never forgotten her, nor ever wanted to – though the circumstances of her death were truly terrible. I have not spoken of her to my daughter, but in a way, she has always been present as a part of our lives. Her dreadful death was one of the reasons that I set up For Our Daughters.

Kelly Anne Bates died at the age of 17, on 16th April 1996 in Manchester. She was murdered by James Smith, a a 49-year-old misogynist with a history of extreme violence towards women. Kelly Anne was just 14 when Smith first targeted her – and 16 when she moved in with him.

Kelly Anne was tortured over a period of four weeks before her death, kept prisoner and starved, tied by her hair to a radiator and a chair. A post-mortem examination of her emaciated body revealed she had suffered injuries on 150 separate sites, including a fractured arm and crush injuries to both hands. She had been beaten, stabbed in the face and body with scissors and forks, scalded, branded with a hot iron on her thigh and partially scalped. Her ears, nose, eyebrows, mouth, lips and genitalia had been mutilated and she had wounds caused by a spade and pruning shears. Smith gouged her eyes out, as the pathologist said “not less than five days and not more than three weeks before her death”. He also stabbed her in the eye sockets in the three days before her death. Finally, he beat her about the head with a shower head and drowned her in a bath.She had lost around 20 kg in weight and had not received water for several days before her death.

Peter Openshaw QC, the prosecutor said: “It was as if he deliberately disfigured her, causing her the utmost pain, distress and degradation … The injuries were not the result of one sudden eruption of violence, they must have been caused over a long period [and] were so extensive and so terrible that the defendant must have deliberately and systematically tortured the girl.” The cause of death was drowning, Openshaw said, adding: “Her death must have been a merciful end to her torment”.

William Lawler, the pathologist who examined Kelly Anne’s body, described her injuries as “the worst he had seen on a murder victim”. Peter Openshaw told the jury at Manchester Crown Court that her physical pain would have been intense, causing “anguish and torment to the point of mental breakdown and collapse.”

According to her mother Margaret, Kelly Anne loved children. She said “She was bright and bubbly” adding “She didn’t walk. She bounced.” Kelly Anne studied at a college in Hyde, Greater Manchester and had worked for a graphics firm. She was strong, was interested in sport and had played hockey, but by the time of her death weighed only seven and a half stone.

The court heard evidence from Smith’s ex-wife and girlfriends who told of his repeated violence and obsessive jealousy. He had come close to drowning two of them and Kelly Anne was not the first under age girl he had targeted. People noticed signs of violence on Kelly Anne well before her death.

Despite his age and history of extreme violence, the fact that Kelly Anne was legally still a child under the terms of the Children Act and for most of this period under the age of consent, nobody protected her, though her parents tried desperately to do so. Police and Social Services took no effective action. After her death, there were no appalled statements from politicians, no calls for a public inquiry.

Now, 18 years later, Britain is dealing with an epidemic of violent sexual abuse of teenage girls – and finally is beginning to believe them. But I have little doubt that before Kelly Anne died, she would simply have been seen – as so many abused girls were at that time – as just another ‘teenage slag’, a silly girl ‘consenting’ to abusive sex with an older man.

Kelly Anne was comprehensively failed – during her life by individuals and agencies who should have protected her and helped her family – and after her death by politicians who should have been outraged at the manner of her dying.

For Our Daughters is determined that she will not be forgotten.

A while ago, I spoke about her at a public meeting. I described For Our Daughters’ commemorative work as “a kind of resurrection”. When I went home, I began to write a poem about Kelly Anne which I called “The Resurrection of Kelly Anne Bates”.

That poem is printed below. Please read it and forgive its inadequacy. I am no poet.

The Resurrection of Kelly Ann Bates

Fire and water did for me
Hephaestus
Base metal laid me low,

You tempered me in plastic
And sculpted me in stone

But I have turned away from you
I have raised my head
I have heard the women singing
And know that I’m not dead

I hear the rasp of a beetle’s jaw
My sinews bind to the dust
I feel the sap in my ancient heart
As I burst from the earth to the air

My body grows like a wild oak tree
My legs like the mountain ash
My arms are filled with turtle doves
The sparrows sing to me

Great rivers stream from my wide mouth
my wings are full of air
My teeth are bright as the flaying knife
There’s music in my ear

The sea comes up to greet me
As I dance with my great feet
I hear faint sounds as your hammer pounds
But I have conquered fear

I set my heel upon your skull
I pound your iron to ash
I leave you a ride on the potter’s wheel
and a stone to break your back

I leave you a duck in your local pond
A bridle for your tongue,
I leave you the beat of myriad feet
For I do not dance alone

Died 13th November 2013

Susan Bowles (55) was found dead on 13th November 2013 in the stairwell of a block of flats in George Street, Hastings, East Sussex. Police were called to the flats by neighbours at 10.35pm. She died as the result of a head injury. Her death is unexplained, but the police no longer consider the death to be suspicious.

At first a 61-year-old man from Hastings was arrested on suspicion of murder, and bailed pending further inquiries. A murder investigation took place. However, the police later reported, in February 2014, that no further action was to be taken and the man’s bail was cancelled.

After Ms Bowles’ death, her family said: “We are shocked and saddened at the tragic news.” At that time, Detective Chief Inspector Jon Fanner of Sussex Police confirmed that the arrested man was known to the dead woman, but would not comment on the nature of the relationship. He confirmed that the police were treating “the death as unexplained” and “keeping an open mind as to what has happened.”

Detectives appealed for witnesses as they tried to trace the movements of the victim over the last three-and-a-half hours of her life. DCI Fanner said at the time that he was “keen to speak to anyone who was in the area and may have seen the woman… or who saw or heard anything suspicious.”

Local councillor John Hodges, commented soon after Ms Bowles’ death. He was quoted in the Argus as follows: “It’s exactly the news that Hastings doesn’t want and has never wanted. By and large the record on crime is very good and the last two police commanders have driven crime levels downwards and that trend continues downwards. Contrary to what the Daily Mail and other newspapers say, we are not a crime-ridden town.” He added “All the information seems to indicate this is a domestic incident and not something the police can legislate for. George Street is a busy thoroughfare, it’s not an empty or desolate street. It’s probably the busiest street in Old Hastings and at times the busiest in town. It’s like the social centre of the town, full of busy restaurants, public houses and independent shops.”

Note: this report was drawn from reports in the Argus and the BBC.

FOD Comment: We are deeply perturbed at the statement attributed to local councillor John Hodges, which was made directly after the report of her death. It expressed no horror at the loss of this woman’s life nor made any statement of sympathy or condolence. Councillor Hodges’s words suggest he is more concerned about the reputation of Hastings, than about the death of a woman who lived there. We are also greatly troubled that he referred to the death, which was then believed to be a homicide as a “domestic incident” and “not not something the police can legislate for”. Domestic homicide is a major killer of women, just as illegal as any other form of homicide. It should be taken seriously by police and the courts – and all politicians. Such homicides very often result from an escalating pattern of abuse and domestic violence by the abuser. Early and effective intervention by police and the courts could prevent such deaths and many injuries. Around two women die each week at the hands of partners and ex-partners. Councillor Hodges should be ashamed.

We repeat that though there still seems no certainty about how and why this particular victim died, the police no longer consider the death to be suspicious.